Karel Appel, Le cheval mourant, 1956 Valeriano Bozal This text is published under an international Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons licence (BY-NC-ND), version 4.0. It may therefore be circulated, copied and reproduced (with no alteration to the contents), but for educational and research purposes only and always citing its author and provenance. It may not be used commercially. View the terms and conditions of this licence at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/legalcode Using and copying images are prohibited unless expressly authorised by the owners of the photographs and/or copyright of the works. © of the texts: Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa Fundazioa-Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao © Karel Appel, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2009 Photography credits © Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa Fundazioa-Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao: fig. 1 © Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN/Adam Rzepka: fig. 6 © Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN/Droits réservés: fig. 19 © Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Photo: Peter Cox, Eindhoven, The Netherlands: fig. 16 © Karel Appel Foundation: figs. 3, 4, 7, 9-13, 15, 17, 18 and 20-22 © Stedilijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent: fig. 2 © Stedilijk Museum Amsterdam: fig. 5 © Tate, London 2010: fig. 8 © The Museum of Modern Art, New York: fig. 14 Text published in: B’09 : Buletina = Boletín = Bulletin. Bilbao : Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa = Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao = Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, no. 5, 2010, pp. 255-300. 1. Force, violence, chance, dynamism, exaggeration, excess, chaos, cruelty, unexpected, spontaneous, unfore- seen and irrational: all are words that can fairly be applied to the work of Karel Appel (1921–2006), and not least to Le cheval mourant (1956) [fig. 1]1. Of course, such labels also apply equally to many other Expressio- nist painters, not just Karel Appel, being pertinent to the works of Jorn, Constant, Corneille and, in general, to members of the CoBrA group of which Appel was a part. They are no less appropriate for abstract Expres- sionists in the US and some Spanish artists, like Antonio Saura. Terms such as these profile a particular kind of modern artist set against established, proper art, tradition and conventionality. Some critics made of this canon a model for a specific type of art and artist: according to Greenberg’s tenets, Pollock fulfilled most of the conditions. All these words were used by critics and artists alike. Appel himself declared: "Dans ma peinture, c’est l’élan, la force, la vitesse, la manière de faire"2; and in the same interview: "La création, elle, est comme un volcan qui entre en éruption [...] Je crois que le point de départ de tout art est le chaos"3. In a 1958 manifesto written for the Experimentele Groep in Holland, which was in fact rejected, he insisted on the need to avoid intellectual theory, emphasizing that art was an intuitive, psychic operation4. Many of the photographs of him at work capture his expressive energy, his use of unusual tools like knives, and his dynamic way with the paint straight from the tube. In his description of the artist’s studio, with the artist present, R. H. Fuchs draws attention to the chaos, the bohemian wildness, the exuberance he found in this particular place (Appel had three studios), the excess of paints, objects, utensils of all kinds. However, despite this first impression, he 1 The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum acquired Le cheval mourant in March 2007 from the André Simoens gallery, Knokke-Heist (Belgium), which had just displayed it at its stand at the Arco ’07 Madrid Art Fair from 15 to 19 February. Previously, it was in Bertie and Gigi Urvater’s collection in Belgium, who must have bought it around 1959. The couple, both involved in the diamond trade, commissioned architect André Jacqmain to design a mansion in Brussels, which was built between 1959 and 1960, with a gallery to exhibit their artworks. Although the gallery only had space for some 140 works, the collection actually numbered nearly one thousand, by the leading artists of the 20th century. However, problems in the diamond trade forced the Urvater family gradually to sell off an essential part of the collection from 1962 on. From that point, all we know about Le cheval mourant is that it was part of the Onzea-Govaerts collection in the early 1990s. See The Hague 1956, cat. 88; Basel 1959: Claus… [et al.] 1958, p. 249; Ostend, 1991, pp. 78, 90, w/no.; Saragossa 2008, pp. 346, 358, no. 223. 2 Appel/Verdet/Towarnicki 1985, p. 78. 3 Ibid., pp. 86 and 151. 4 Quoted by Ragon 1988, p. 375. 3 1. Karel Appel (1921-2006) Le cheval mourant, 1956 Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Inv. no. 07/7 4 2. Karel Appel (1921-2006) Nu barbare, 1957 Oil on canvas, 195 x 130 cm Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium adds that Appel "is a classical painter who lives much less in the ‘madding’ crowd and far more in the quiet of his studios"5. It’s not hard to accept these rather clichéd touches. A quick glance at his works brings many to light, some of which he actually signals in the title: Nu barbare (1957) [fig. 2], an exceptional work of no little size that encapsulates many of the features of painting at the time. But the important thing is not so much to accept such words, although they certainly suit him, as to analyze what there is in them in pictorial terms. Put another way, we need to see how these verbal attributions translate in painterly terms and how the process led to Le cheval mourant. Otherwise, all these concepts are little more than an ideological screen, when not simply rhetorical and pseudoliterary: while purporting to lay painting bare, they actually cover it up, keeping us from us, putting generic descriptions in its place. 2. Popular urban culture and primitive art are in the origins of Appel’s career. Born in a district of Amsterdam, from his youth the artist came into contact, according to Peter Bellew, with the sculpture of Dutch New Guinea, a good example of which is to be found in the collection of the Colonial Museum (today the Tro- penmuseum)6. Appel himself told Simon Vinkenoog that all his work was popular, in that it came from the 5 Fuchs 1991, p. 102. Exhibition curated by R. H. Fuchs and F. W. Kaiser. 6 Bellew 1968, pp. 1-2. 5 3. Karel Appel (1921-2006) Vue sur la Ville de Oorschot, 1942 Oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm Karel Appel Estate Foundation people7, adding that it wasn’t "folk" popular, but more the kind of popular found in an industrial, incipiently consumerist society, with high waste levels, like the Amsterdam of his youth, a popularity from which nei- ther violence nor a certain degree of chaos are exempt. His earliest paintings, from the 1935–1942 period, were landscapes and portraits in which, while one may appreciate the skill of the young artist, still little more than a boy, there are few interesting features, with the possible exception of the importance he gives to colour. His chromatic intensity could have sprung from his interest in Van Gogh, an artist who would remain a benchmark throughout Appel’s life. But in any case, as one would expect from someone his age, it’s a very moderate and as yet pretty elementary Van Gogh. Figurations are conventional, but the use of colour in landscapes like Vue sur la Ville de Oorschot (1942) [fig. 3] veers heavily in favour of yellows, ochres and blacks. In 1942 the influence of Matisse can be appreciated in Appel’s treatment of colour, as he introduced reds, blues and yellows to his palette, precisely the range associated with Matisse–style joie de vivre. The in- fluence of Matisse, another constant feature of Appel’s work, would intensify in 1945, when he appears to have become acquainted with the German Expressionists and, in particular, Paul Klee, an artist who would have a decisive influence on his entire oeuvre. Appel enjoyed painting trees and produced some that remind us unmistakably of Klee’s painting. Appel was 24 when World War II ended. To judge from subsequent declarations, he was well aware that the world had changed and, with it, art (or, if it hadn’t, that it needed to). Although he’s actually talking 7 Cited in Ragon 1988, p. 101. 6 about CoBrA, what Appel says in the following quote suggests his state of mind at that time: "Or la rupture que s’était produite avec l’expérience de la guerre et la naissance d’une société nouvelle, nous sommait de trouver une autre écriture, et cela s’imposait à nous comme une nécessité intérieure", he told Frédéric de Towarnicki8. What Appel is pointing to here is that the avant–garde movements of between the wars had run out of steam. There was a pressing need to "start from scratch". The immediate post-war period, from 1946 to 1948, were key years in his artistic development. During that time, he profiled and shaped the mould for some of the defining features of his painting, which would even- tually lead, in 1956 and 1957, to Le cheval mourant. Superficially, we can actually reconstruct how things happened9. Appel discovered Dubuffet’s Art brut, the art produced by children and the mentally ill, what the Nazis classed as "degenerate" art; enthralled by the Dadaists, especially Schwitters, he read Les Chants de Maldoror, came into contact with Klee’s oeuvre at a 1948 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, became familiar with Picasso’s output, understood the importance of material and the potential of collage, and was involved in the journal Reflex (1948), mouthpiece of the Experimentele Groep in Holland, which published his drawings, alongside those of Constant and Corneille, even though, as noted above, the group actually rejected the manifesto Appel wrote (it did however publish a manifesto written by Constant).